Libriohexer ~ 19!

Dying, although painful, had a great upside—Sam had a little free time without Bill to touch base with his parents, check his emails, and surf the web. That took all of an hour, and then he spent the rest of his time pouring over Eternium wikis and forums, although a lot of information was still clearly being suppressed. A number of players and streamers had even complained about somehow getting their content removed almost as soon as it went up, though no one could figure out how.

Sam was hoping to get an inside scoop on Interspatial Libraries, but that turned out to be a complete bust. It seemed the folks running the show over at Eternium didn’t want any spoilers leaking to those who weren’t already on the servers. Or anyone currently on the servers gaming the system. If Sam wanted to unlock his class specialization, he was going to have to do it the old fashion way—which meant no cheats, tips, or walkthrough. Just mountains of elbow grease and a thimble full of luck.

Since he couldn’t turn up anything useful on Eternium, he decided to spend his remaining hours of forced relaxation researching chickens and chicken farming. That and come up with a game plan for what the Wolf Pack should do next.

The others had spent their own respawns doing much of the same thing. After respawn, they spent the rest of the next week making better life choices.

Kai wanted to take another run at the Dungeon Boss, but was quickly outvoted. As a team, they decided the best course of action involved grinding. Tirelessly. They needed to capture the Irondowns but their tussle with the Keeper of the Forge had been a humbling experience for everyone involved. Sam looked sadly at his character sheet, having been slapped all the way down to level eight hurt on a primal level. While he hadn’t lost anything besides experience, his specialization quest had turned grey.

Bill explained that it meant he could still work at it, but he couldn’t finish the quest before getting his levels back.

Name: Sam_K ‘Experimental Forger’

Class: Bibliomancer

Profession 1: Bookbinder

Profession 2: Unassigned

Level: 8 Exp: 39,304 Exp; to next level: 5,696

Hit Points: 140/140

Mana: 511/545

Mana Regen: 15.73/sec

Stamina: 154/154

Characteristic: Raw score (Modifier)

Strength: 20

Dexterity: 34

Constitution: 19

Intelligence: 49

Wisdom: 48

Charisma: 21

Perception: 20

Luck: 14

Karmic Luck: +1

Clearly, the fire golem was leaps and bounds outside their current skill level. So instead of trying to take any more shortcuts to the top, they focused on consistency over time. They trained relentlessly at the Totem grounds and hunting monsters in the wild areas outside of the Forest of Chlorophyll Chaos—the others were hoping to unlock their own specializations—and focused on clearing and reclaiming the less challenging Irondown Junctions.

Though the days seemed to crawl by at a glacial pace, their efforts paid major dividends. By week’s end Sam had managed to return to level ten, and they’d managed to capture six more nodes, bringing their total up to seven of eight. He hated that all the bonus experience went to getting him back to where he had been, but the others were just as bad-off.

All that remained was the dreaded Keeper of the Forge, and the truth was they still weren’t ready to square off against him again. Their victories over the other Junctions had been bitterly fought and narrowly won. The Compendium on Protected and Dangerous Locations had been an invaluable tool, but its tips and clues were generic at best and the Junction Guardians were deadly.

The Librarian had ended up being a monstrous spider crafted from paper and steel that had hunted by sound and vibration, lashing out from the shadows at even the slightest whisper. Bill's big, fat mouth had brought down the spider’s papery wraith before Sam had taken ten steps into the Library, and had slit Sam’s throat from ear to ear. He’d almost died so quickly it had been embarrassing; only managing to stay alive thanks to his demolished armor being reapplied by Bill in almost the same instant it had been destroyed.

The Mad Mechanical Alchemist had released a toxic acid cloud that had sent both Kai and Arrow for respawn. They’d narrowly managed to clear the Control Room by taking out an armored Centurion, but not before the hooved creature caved in Dizzy’s skull with a devastating donkey kick.

That had still been a huge win.

With the Control Room conquered, they were able to bring all the Former Junction Guardians back online—this time in their service—and configure the traps in previously seized areas.  Now they could safely tread through most of the hallways of the Irondowns without having to worry about getting impaled by floor spears, sliced in half by oversized doom pendulums, or charbroiled alive by hidden flame vents. Any enemy trying to enter the Irondowns wouldn’t be so fortunate. The Dwarven mechs were actually delightful contraptions once they weren’t bent on murder.

The Maintenance Mechs cleaned and repaired—Mop even did laundry—the steely-eyed Robo Chicken helped tend to the coops, and the Melee Trainer was always good for a few rounds of deadly sparring. The Library itself turned out to be utterly disappointing. Like most of the other rooms in the Irondowns, the Dwarves who had once called this place home had packed up their stuff before moving on, and that included every single book. An entire room of empty bookcases. The Librarian itself was fantastically useful, and Sam had big plans for it once he got his own Spatial Library up and running.

The best mech ended up being the Kitchen Chef. Ironic, since it had also been the most nightmarish of all the Guardians to subdue so far.

Octo-Chef, as the Wolf Pack had taken to calling it, was equal parts automaton and octopus. The thing scuttled around on segmented arachnoid legs and had six arms protruding from its iron-forged torso, each wielding a different kitchen utensil. An industrial cheese grater in one robotic hand, a tenderizing mallet in another, a brutal meat cleaver in a third, a rolling pin in the fourth, and a razor-edged spatula sharper. The Octo-Chef had carried an impromptu shield in the last hand—a frying pan, of course—and blasted out gouts of boiling water from its mouth.

It would’ve been funny if the thing wasn’t such an absolute terror.

Admittedly, seizing the kitchen had been worth every burn. Octo-Chef was something of a wonder-worker behind the stove. Sam and company were eating like royalty. That was thanks in no small part to his blooming chicken farm. While the other members of the Wolfpack spent their days either grinding out experience over at the Totem Training Grounds, or fulfilling their quota of sabotage missions, Sam had been furiously working on his chicken operation.

Floof was a growing girl, and had already swelled to the size of a Rottweiler. The floofy look had gone away after a few days and now she had a coat of metallic gold feathers, sharper than most good daggers.

Despite her terrifyingly fast growth and her enormous size, she still followed Sam and Bill around like a lost puppy, chirping and clucking appreciatively as they tended to the coop. Feeding her had turned out to be more of a challenge than Sam had anticipated. He’d burned through his entire supply of food in less than three days and had already had to make another dumpster-dive run into Ardania. But that was worth it, too.

Aside from Floof’s rapidly increasing size, she’d also started producing eggs. A lot of them. Anywhere between two and three dozen eggs per day, depending on her mood and diet. All were larger than a standard chicken egg, closer in size to ostrich eggs, the shells brown and speckled and strangely warm to the touch.

The eggs wouldn’t just hatch on their own. They required significant TLC, but in a very game-logic way they didn’t require a rooster to be able to get chicks. They did require specific incubation conditions to be met—just as the Prime Brood Egg had. So, Sam had spent hours upon hours carting in fresh hay and creating more of the mana infused heating stones, which he used in the coop stalls lining the walls. Unlike Floof, a properly incubated basic chicken egg would hatch within four hours.

The feathered minions that emerged were just as cute as Floof had been as a chick but lacked her size and metallic plumage. Like Floof, they grew fast. They never got to her size, but they were all at least twice as large as any chicken Sam had ever seen in real life. Those new chickens quickly took to laying eggs of their own, though these were of the normal variety and couldn’t be incubated, no matter what Sam tried. That was fine, because they made for good eating.

He'd also had his first successes hatching a magically enhanced chicken. The first Lesser Brood Matriarch. She had bright orange and red plumage, radiated as much heat as a furnace, and had the fiery temper to match. Sam had taken to calling her Blaze, though Bill offhandedly decided to nickname her ‘Spicy Chick’. Sam was feeding Floof a steady supply of fire enhanced curry, and he was fairly sure that Blaze was the end result. Unlike the others, her eggs could be successfully incubated. Her brood all had the same colored plumage and the meat itself was deliciously spicy and offered a twenty-five percent fire-resistance bonus for three hours.

Over the course of a single week, Sam ended up with three dozen healthy chickens. And with Floof and Blaze producing so many viable eggs, Sam had taken to the process of culling the flock—with a little help from Velkan.

The feathers were carefully plucked, then meticulously cleaned and sorted into another area where Sam and Bill processed them into quills. Regular, run-of-the-mill chicken feathers weren't exactly in high demand, but assuming this process worked, they wouldn't be regular run-of-the-mill chicken feathers for long. Already, the feathers from the Firebirds held fifteen percent more mana than typical, unenchanted quills. When used in preparation of fireball spell scrolls, they caused the spell to be three percent more effective. Not a lot, but not nothing. The rest of the feathers were treated and stored to be used as replacements for the Quill Wings Cloak.

Once the feathers were taken care of, the skin was carefully removed and set aside to be turned into vellum. That was a time and labor-intensive process, and it quickly became apparent to Sam why Vellum was so expensive to buy. Aside from the ingredients themselves, manufacturing the vellum was painful and tedious.

First the skin had to be gently scrubbed clean with a smooth pumice stone, removing any excess feathers or meat, before being stretched tight over a series of wooden frames, built just for that purpose. Once the vellum was in place on the frames, Sam would alternate between wetting and drying the skin while working it over with the keen edge of a curved skinning blade, bringing it to the correct thickness. Finally, Sam finished off the process by applying a type of abrasive, powdery chalk so that the skin would accept and hold ink. Add to that the need to infuse the vellum with Mana and each piece took more than ten minutes to prepare.

Not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but when you had hundreds or even thousands of sheets to prepare, all of those minutes added up fast. The end result was still worth it, because buying Vellum was a gold coin per sheet; which meant a few hundred sheets could quickly end up being the price of a used car back in the real world. He didn’t have that kind of money to burn, not anymore, and he would need thousands of dollars’ worth of materials to kick start his Interspatial Library. All that scraping and curing also had the added benefit of leveling up his Bookbinders Skill by one, bringing him up to level three.

Bookbinder Profession benefits at Level Three: Increases the speed of reading and writing by 65%. Reduces cost and production time for paper, ink, and book bindings by 30%. Salvage and reclaim 60% of damaged paper, vellum, ink, and bookbinding materials.

As for the rest of the butchered chicken—the meat and organs—all went straight to the kitchen to be processed by Octo-Chef and Velkan; the Wolfman, in particular, seemed very pleased by the arrangement. Most of the high-quality cuts of meat ended up going into a cold pantry to be used for meals later on. It was hard to get food out here away from Human civilization. The Wolf Pack still hadn't managed to find a decent place to buy fresh produce, so most of their vegetables and fruits were harvested in the forest, which was always a risky proposition. Getting fresh meat was a little bit easier thanks to all the rabbits, wolves, and foxes roaming the countryside, but having the chickens on hand was vastly easier.

And tastier.

Even with the crew eating their fill morning, noon, and night—chicken and waffles, chicken and dumplings, chicken noodle soup, chicken tacos, fried chicken—there was still plenty of meat to go around. Not to mention the offal, which no one in the Wolf Pack wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole. The idea of eating chicken hearts just wasn’t overly appetizing, even if they did offer some hefty health regeneration buffs. Thankfully, the Wolfman loved the organ meat and they couldn’t get enough of Sam’s chicken.

Which was why, today—for the first time—Sam and Velkan were in New Narvik to offload their surplus. They didn’t want the meat to spoil and having a little extra coin for the Guild coffers was never a bad thing. Since Sam had managed to produce magically enhanced chicken, Velkan had finally agreed to take him to the Wolfman Marketplace.

The pair of them threaded their way through the sprawling dirt streets of the makeshift city. A formidable palisade wall surrounded the encampment, and as with most Wolfman villages, the houses were built high up among the tree branches, connected by hanging rope bridges. The shops were tucked away at the base of the trees where it was easier to spread out wares or work. Sam and Velkan offered polite greetings to the Wolfman as they passed, and Sam expected them to stop at any moment. The cagey Wolfman guided him deeper and deeper into the heart of the encampment, past most of the shops and stalls Sam was most familiar with.

“Where exactly are we going? We just passed by Sukin’s stall.” Sam started faltering. He hooked a thumb toward a lean grey-furred wolf, selling various odds and ends—everything from strips of leather to stringy looking carrots. “I was sort of assuming that’s where we would sell it.”

Velkan chuffed, ears twitching. The Wolfman equivalent of laughing hysterically.

“No. I told you I would take you to the Wolfman Marketplace. That,” he gestured toward the old vendor, “is not the Wolfman Marketplace. That is place for young cubs to procure things for the Pack. But you will not make the money you need selling at such a stall. Now that you have a product with real value to the Pack and worth moving in bulk, it is time you become a true merchant. It is just a little further now.”

He guided them past a longhouse crafted from wood and set back among a circular grove of trees with a small clearing at the middle. They pushed through the treeline and Sam froze when he saw two massive wooden poles, topped with a simple wooden beam running across the top. It was just like the Totems from the training ground, though these beams were carved to resemble a crafty looking fox with a pinched face and sly eyes.

<I’m sensing major energy pouring off this place,> Bill sent into Sam’s head instantly. <Like… big time spatial magic. For being uncivilized monsters, these wolf folk sure have a few tricks up their sleeves.>

“This is just like the Totem grounds,” Sam stated breathlessly, feeling a thrum of excitement run down his arms. Velkan grunted in acknowledgement. “But I don’t understand. The Totems train specific attributes. Does this place do the same thing?”

Velkan offered a bare flash of his teeth. Sam couldn’t quite discern the meaning. Amusement? Excitement? “This is not for training, Sam of the Wolfpack. Fighting and training is of utmost importance to our people, but we are also a people of commerce. As in life, commerce is war. You need a proper battlefield to host such negotiations. This is one entrance to the Wolfman Market, but there are many like it. Each Outpost has a totem such as this and they all lead to the one true Wolfman Marketplace. This is a place where our kind go to barter with our kinsman from all over the wild. Its existence is even more closely guarded than the Totem training ground. Humanity must never know about what we have built.”

“But I’m a human,” Sam protested weakly, hoping he wouldn’t be kicked out for reminding the Wolfman.

“Only in your flesh. In your heart, you are a wolf. A wolf with a noble title, no less. Now that you are also a merchant, you are within pack rights to know of this place. Come.” He turned on lupine feet and headed between the pillars, vanishing in the blink of an eye.